Day 10: Lots of meetings, guide to debt limit problem

President Obama (and Vice President Biden) Thursday will meet with the Senate Democratic Caucus in the State Dining Room. After that, they will meet with House Republican leaders and certain House GOP committee chairs in the Roosevelt Room.

Republicans have more or less dropped their Obamacare demands that shut down the government and have pivoted to accusing Democrats of refusing to negotiate. They seem to be getting some mileage out of it, forcing Democrats to be receptive to their offer of a short-term increase in the debt limit so this can all keep going for several more weeks while they try to extract tax reform concessions and trims to entitlement programs.

There is no plan to end the shutdown.

Former Treasury official and former Republican Bruce Bartlett offers a useful guide to why the Treasury cannot simply prioritize debt payments to prevent a default despite large amounts of cash coming in each month:

“Try to think of Treasury’s problem this way. Many people have online bill pay and many have automated payments set up or bills that go directly to the bank for payment. I do. Now imagine that you have 100 million such payments every month, about what Treasury deals with. Think how much trouble and effort would be needed to go through them and prioritize them on some basis to be determined–and you have no idea what your cash flow is. Now imagine you have only days to do this before your can’t-miss mortgage and health insurance bill is due and half your staff is on furlough because Republicans in Congress are having a hissy fit. You begin to see what Treasury must deal with.”

Senate majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is not in a conciliatory mood on the debt ceiling: “Now that the bill for Republicans’ own excesses has come due – the bill for wars they supported and tax cuts they created – they want to walk out on the check.”